The 2014/2015 year ended up being a bit of a down movie year for me. For starters, I only watched about 60 movies, which seems like a lot except last year I watched 95. There also wasn't quite the depth of really good movies this year. My top 25 last year were all movies that would've been in my top 10 this year. There were also about 12 movies that I didn't like at all, and that's more than usual. But that's not to say there weren't some quality movies . I thought there were three 'great' movies, and my top movie this year will go down as one of my all-time favorites. And I watched a handful of films that were really strange, but also adventurous and challenging movies that were definitely worth watching. So here are all the movies I watched this year, ranked from least favorite to favorite. Let me know what you think of them too!
58. Joe I’m going to share my thought process in watching this movie, since it’s much more interesting than the actual movie. 1) Saw the trailer, and thought “That looks awful. What was the last good movie Nicholas Cage made?” 2) Movie comes out on DVD, and I saw a new trailer that made it look like a semi-entertaining revenge thriller. Maybe. 3) Read an article on Grantland that talked about the movie being underrated. Maybe. 4) It’s winter, and there are very few decent DVD options. Ok, fine I’ll give it a shot. 5) Watched the movie, and thought “That was awful. What was the last good movie Nicholas Cage made?”
57. Transcendence What would happen if an evil Johnny Depp got into the internet and started destroying everything? Watch this movie and find out! Or don’t and save a couple hours of your life. I wish I’d done the latter.
56. Lucy The movie Lucy takes this year’s Ottway Prize (named after Liam Neeson’s role in The The Grey, the least scientifically accurate movie made in the last 5 years). Lucy is played by Scarlett Johansen, who is able to control time and space, basically because she overdoses on drugs. The central premise is the oft-repeated myth that humans only use 10% of their brain. When Lucy accidentally gets too much of a new drug, it allows her to use 100% of her brain, essentially turning her into a superhero bent on getting revenge. What makes this movie awful is that instead of just taking this stupid idea and making a fun movie (which they already did a couple years ago with Bradley Cooper in Limitless), they have Morgan Freeman play a brain scientist that tries to make everything sound like it might actually be possible by talking in semi-scientific terminology. It isn't a mistake that the character is named Lucy - at one point in the movie she actually goes back and meets Lucy, the name of the Australopithecus skeleton found in the 1970's of one of the earliest hominid species. That should give you an idea both of how seriously the movie takes itself, and how stupid it is.
55. Upstream Color This might not be a bad movie. I wouldn’t know, because I’m not sure I understood a single thing that happened. There are only a few lines of dialogue in the entire film. There are some pigs. There’s a lot of weird music. There are a bunch of characters, but I’m not really sure who any of them were, or what they were doing. I will say that it was at least interesting enough that I watched the whole thing. That’s about the only compliment I can give.
54. We are the Best I thought I’d like this more than I did. It’s a Swedish movie about a couple of misfit girls that form a punk band, even though they don’t actually know how to play any instruments. At times it is a sweet, fun story, at times, but it never was quite as fun as I thought it would be, and I didn’t like the anti-religion slant that the movie had. I think some people would like this a lot more than I did, but it just wasn’t really my type of movie. Some critics even had this in their top 10 of the year but the more I think about it, the less I like it.
53. Winter in the Blood Based on a classic Northwest novel about a Native American man that wrestles with his past, with alcohol, and with a wife that has left him and taken his rifle. The book is very good, and has a lyrical, surreal quality to it, but the movie fails to capture the tone of the book, and it just isn’t very fun to watch.
52. The Signal This movie starts out as a road trip flick, with 3 friends heading west to college, only to take a side-trip to try to discover the identity of a mysterious computer hacker/genius. Things don’t turn out as they planned on the side trip, and at this point the movie turns science-fiction-y. Unfortunately it’s one of those movies that tries to be mysterious, and it keeps building towards something that might be kind of interesting, only when you finally get to the end it makes it feel like the whole thing was a waste of time.
51. The Homesman Tommy Lee Jones is a no-good frontiersman that agrees to help Hillary Swank bring 3 women that have lost their minds back east to get medical help. There is one terrific revenge scene where Tommy Lee goes crazy on an innkeeper that refuses to put them up for the night. Let’s just say that if Mary and Joseph had had Tommy Lee Jones with them, Jesus would have been born in a proper room. Either that or all of Bethlehem would’ve have been shot or burned down. Otherwise this was an exceptionally boring movie – this kind of movie is why not enough people make Westerns anymore. Less of this kind of movie and more like True Grit, please.
50. I Origins Here is a good litmus test to decide if you should see this movie: Do you think it would be a good idea to cast Brad Pitt’s brother as the lead in a movie? If you do, then maybe you will like it. For me, the whole thing was just not quite as good as it could have been. This movie should have been right up my alley. They main characters are biologists, studying the evolution of the eye. There are some interesting ideas, but then eventually it veers into pseudo-science and loses any scientific credibility it had tried to establish. Sort of like using Brad Pitt’s brother in the lead – it would have been a lot better if they had just stuck with the real thing.
49. Shame This isn’t a bad movie, it’s just hard to watch. I watched it because it’s directed by Steve McQueen, the director of 12 Years a Slave, which was my #1 movie last year. It stars Michael Fassbender, who is an amazingly gifted actor (in McQueen’s movies alone you see an incredible range of characters as well as remarkable physical transformations he goes through for the roles). Fassbender plays a man who falls further and further into a sex addiction, and it’s tough to watch. As a director, McQueen’s greatest strength can be the way he makes you uncomfortable, the way he lingers on certain shots that make you squirm. In 12 Years a Slave it forced you to confront just how awful the treatment of slaves was when he lingers on a scene of a man struggling to breathe as he hung from a noose, and of slaves being beaten. It makes you uncomfortable, but that’s the point. In 12 Years a Slave and Hunger (another of his earlier movies), being uncomfortable helped underscore the message of the movie, but in Shame, it just made me feel uncomfortable without feeling like there was any point.
48. Kingsman: The Secret Service This could have been a really fun movie. In fact, all they had to do was take the exact same movie, and make a PG-13 version, and this probably would have been a top 25 movie of the year for me. There are good action scenes, some fun gadgets, and who would have thought that Colin Firth would be good as a secret agent? Unfortunately this was also the most violent movie I saw all year – I’d put the body count somewhere around 200, most of them involving splattering blood and limbs or heads being cut off. I’m normally not one to complain about violence in movies, but it probably didn’t help that there were a bunch of jr. high kids sitting right in front of us, and I ran into about 5 other high school kids I knew, and all of them thought the movie was great. I guess when you become so numb to seeing violence you don’t even think twice about it, even if it is as repulsively violent as this movie.
47. Cold in July Revenge thrillers, if done right, can be great to watch. They’re usually set somewhere in the South (working class Midwest is also acceptable), it’s usually hot, and the tension cranks up as the movie goes on. Unfortunately if they’re done wrong, they go over the top and it just ends up with a bunch of people shooting each other. This one starts with a man shooting an intruder, and the intruder’s dad deciding to get revenge on him. It could have worked, but the acting just isn’t that good, and there were too many moments that made me say “Oh please…” If you want to watch a revenge thriller done right, watch #7 on this list.
46. Fury This is a World War II tank movie that isn’t really bad, but also seems derivative of every other war movie I’ve ever seen. If I’d never seen a war movie I probably would’ve been more impressed, but I watched this on the same day that I watched American Sniper, which was a better movie in every way. Brad Pitt stars, which is usually good, but so does Shia LeBouef, which is not as good.
45. Foxcatcher What an utterly joyless movie. I guess it was decently made, but it’s just not a very enjoyable movie to watch. There are good acting performances throughout, and it’s an interesting story, but there’s no chemistry between the actors, and it just seemed to be missing something. Even in the most depressing movies there are usually a few moments of levity – a joke, some interaction between the characters that makes you smile, something. In Foxcatcher, there is nothing. I’m not sure I smiled a single time watching this film.
44. Noah I don’t really remember the part in the Bible about the giant stone-people that help Noah build the ark and defeat evil, but they show up in this version. It’s watchable, and mildly entertaining but also pretty forgettable stuff. The giant rock people are just one of many examples of places that stuff was made up or drama was added to make the story more of a spectacle. Russel Crowe plays Noah, and by the end it would not have surprised me at all if after one of Noah’s fights (yes, there are several) Crowe had ripped off his shirt, pulled out a sword and yelled out “My name is Gladiator!”
43. The Motel Life A small movie, based on a novel by Portland author and musician Willy Vlautin. If you’ve ever read any of Vlautin’s books or listened to his band, Richmond Fontaine (which you should), you know that his stories and songs are filled with broken people struggling to get by. As in most of his other work, the story is tragic, but there is beauty in how the damaged people lean on each other and find hope in one another. A better introduction to Willy Vlautin would be to read the book Lean on Pete.
42. Wish I Was Here Zach Braff used to be my favorite. I watched every single episode of the TV show Scrubs. Garden State is maybe my all-time favorite romantic comedy (granted, I usually hate romantic comedies, but still). He was the best. But as my sister put it when I tried to explain Wish I Was Here to her, it seems like maybe his moment has passed. The movie has a few charming scenes, but they just don’t fit together into a good movie. It’s less than the sum of its parts, and feels like it’s trying too hard. I wanted to like this movie but it didn’t work for me.
41. St. Vincent Bill Murray is one of my all-time favorite actors. No one has been in more of my all-time favorites than him: Groundhog Day, Caddyshack, Rushmore, and Ghostbusters are all in my top 50 favorite films ever made, and he's been in a ton of other stuff I've really liked, especially all the Wes Anderson movies. So needless to say I went into this with pretty high expectations, and unfortunately I came away disappointed. Murray does a decent job as a curmudgeonly old neighbor that helps watch his neighbor's (Melissa McCarthy) kid after school. Everything about the movie is so predictable, and even Murray feels like he's not trying very hard. Everyone's accent is terrible, including Murray's, but especially Naomi Watts, who plays a Russian hooker. Don't ask. It ends up being so schmaltzy that I just couldn't enjoy it. If they had made this movie and let Murray be himself, ad-lib most of the dialog, and not tried so hard to show that it had a heart of gold under that rough exterior, this would've been a 100% better movie.
40. The Maze Runner This is Hunger Games lite; a teen thriller set in a dystopian future. It’s done well enough that it’s entertaining, but it’s not particularly memorable, and I thought that the actual Hunger Games and The Giver were both better versions of the same type of movie this year. I also didn’t realize that this was the first movie in a planned trilogy when I watched it, so I was really annoyed when it ended without any resolution.
39. 22 Jump Street This movie is really, really lazy, but still kind of funny. Pretty much from the outset the movie announces that it will be ripping off the earlier movie, and making most of the same jokes. The plot is loosely about Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum going undercover in college to try to break up another drug ring, but no one, including the actors, takes the plot very seriously. Hill and Tatum still have good chemistry, and there are enough funny moments that it didn’t feel like too much of a waste of time.
38. Frank This is a bizarre, aggressively weird movie about a musician, Frank, that is an enigmatic genius, making music that isn’t really understandable, but seems like it is really important and really cool. Frank also wears a giant paper-mache head at all times, even in the shower. The story is told from the point of view of Domnhall Gleeson, who plays an accidental bandmate of Frank’s, and one of the few semi-sane people in the film. Frank is played by the great Michael Fassbender, who is not only a great actor but also incredibly handsome, so having him play a character that doesn’t show his face is an interesting choice. Probably too weird for most people, but I could see some people really loving this.
37. Begin Again Mark Ruffalo plays a down-on-his-luck music producer, Kiera Knightly plays a young singer-songwriter and Adam Levine from Maroon 5 basically plays himself as her singer-songwriter boyfriend. When Levine’s character hits the big time, the two break up, and then Ruffalo “discovers” Knightly playing in a club. It’s a pleasant movie, and has a fun role played by Cee Lo Green who also plays a version of himself. It’s a nice movie, with very few surprises, and the music is ok. The people that made this movie also made the movie Once which is a really similar and better version of this movie set in Ireland, with music that is fantastic.
36. The One I Love A man and a woman in an unhappy marriage go to see a counselor, who recommends they go visit a vacation house to get away and re-kindle their love. When they are at the vacation house, they find that there is a guest house on the property. As they separately go into the guest house very strange things start to happen. Are there other people in the guest house? Or is it just them? Why does it seem like it is a “better” version of themselves when they are in the guest house? The film messes with your brain, and is certainly unique.
35. Godzilla If you are watching the movie Godzilla, you should have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Lots of special effects, monsters fighting each other, not a whole lot of plot, but lots of people in peril and some decent actors looking to make a lot of money. It’s done well enough that it’s entertaining, but not much more than that.
34. The Giver Another teen drama set in a dystopian world, The Giver is a parable, or perhaps a cautionary tale, about a future world where everyone has a role, everything is ordered, and there is little pain but also little love, all in the name of order and safety. If the plot sounds familiar, that’s because there have been about a half-dozen similar movies that have come out in the last couple years. This one is based on a book by Lois Lowry that has been around for a while, and I enjoyed it. At its heart, the movie (and the book) ask the question ‘Is it worth getting rid of pain, disorder, and risk, if it also means giving up love?’
33. Snowpiercer When I saw the previews for Snowpiercer, I thought it looked like a crazy action movie set entirely on a train. When I read the reviews for it, people talked about how great it was, and gushed about how the movie’s plot was a metaphor for our world today. In short: humans have made the climate of the planet unlivable, so the last remnants of Earth’s population circle the globe on a never-ending train loop. The wealthy live towards the front of the train, while the poor are relegated to miserable slave-like conditions in the back. The people in the back form a plot to fight their way to the front to take over the train. It’s entertaining, and maybe more thoughtful than most, but in the end, I’d summarize it as a crazy action movie set entirely on a train.
32. Locke Do you like Tom Hardy? He’s the guy that played Bane in the third Batman movie, Max in the most recent Mad Max movie, and in general is a handsome, physical actor with a strong screen presence. If you like him, you will probably like this movie, because he is the only person on-screen for 100% of the film. It starts out with him leaving work, getting in his car, and driving a couple of hours to be there for the birth of a child with a woman that isn’t his wife. He’s leaving to be with her at the same time that a huge job that he’s supposed to be supervising with his company is about to get started. Over the next 90 minutes he talks on the phone to his wife, kids, boss, co-workers, and the mother of his child that is about to be born. In 90 minutes his entire personal and professional life is on the verge of collapsing, and we watch as he tries to keep an impossible number of balls in the air. It’s an interesting idea that seems like you shouldn’t be able to pull off – make a movie about a guy in a car talking on the phone for 90 minutes, but Hardy is good enough that he makes it work.
31. Lone Survivor Lone Survivor is based on the true story of Marcus Luttrell, the ‘lone survivor’ of a Navy Seal mission in Afghanistan. I tried to read this book a couple years ago because I’d heard that it was an incredible story, and it is remarkable, both that this man survived, and how he survives. But when I started reading I couldn’t get past the macho military stuff at the beginning about how great the Seals are, and never got to the actual story, but in the movie you don’t have to deal with that part so it’s a straightforward action/military film that is done well and entertaining.
30. Gasland The US is currently undergoing an energy boom. Across the country, fracking has allowed us to extract oil and natural gas that was once thought to be too difficult and too expensive to access. But is that a good thing? When Josh Fox is approached about selling drilling rights on his family’s land, he sets off across the country to look at the effects of fracking, and it’s not pretty. Poisoned wells, health problems, drinking water that lights on fire. Of course this is all anecdotal evidence, and the film-maker has a clear anti-fracking agenda, but it is pretty hard to ignore the stories, even with the new EPA study that just came out saying that fracking isn’t harmful. This was a really depressing movie to me, as it makes it abundantly instead of transitioning to cleaner energy sources, we are going to continue to do whatever we can to the Earth to extract every drop of fossil fuel from the Earth. Even if it means doing increasing amounts of damage to the earth as we have to work harder and harder to get the fuel that’s left, and even as the burning of those fuels makes the planet warmer and changes it in irreversible ways.
29. The Broken Circle Breakdown This is a really well done movie that I don’t have ranked higher only because it is probably the most depressing movie of the year. The movie is in Danish, and follows two young artists that fall in love, have a child, then fall apart as their daughter gets sick. It is as depressing as it sounds, but it is also beautiful in many ways, and even though the movie is subtitled, the characters play in a band that plays Americana music, and the music is really good. A challenging but worthwhile movie.
28. Shotgun Stories This movie has been around for about 10 years, and I’m sure most of you haven’t heard of it, but I decided to watch it because it was the first movie directed by Jeff Nichols, who directed Mud, one of my favorite movies last year, and Take Shelter, a couple years before that. Like Take Shelter, this stars a young Michael Shannon, who is terrific. It’s a Southern revenge-thriller, which can be great (see # 7), or really bad (see # 58). In this case it’s a solid movie that showcases the talent of Nichols and Shannon who are both rising stars.
27. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 With every single movie in this series I’ve gone in with low expectations, but have ended up pleasantly surprised. I read all the books in the series after seeing the first movie, and the last book was my least favorite, but they manage to do a decent job, even as a single book is stretched out over two parts to make more money. Jennifer Lawrence is still good, and I’m sure I’ll watch the last installment too.
26. The Lunchbox This is a delightful Indian film about a woman trapped in a joyless marriage, who tries to spice things up in their marriage, literally, by making magnificent lunches that are brought by delivery service to her husband at work each day. When the delivery service accidentally brings the lunch to the wrong man, a lonely widower, they start exchanging letters about the food. The interaction between the man and woman is great, but I especially enjoyed the scenes between the older man, who is on the verge of retiring, and the younger man that is hired to replace him. It’s not a fast-paced movie, but if you like foreign movies, you will probably enjoy it.
25. Drinking Buddies Jake Johnson and Olivia Wilde star as friends that work together at a brewery. They both are dating other people, and are both a bit of a mess personally. Even though they’re not actually together, there is great chemistry between Johnson and Wilde, and Wilde in particular is really good. Her character is probably a bit of a male fantasy – she likes to hang out and drink beer with the guys, is funny, and amazingly beautiful. But she takes the role and fills it with charisma, and really makes the movie.
24. Dirty Wars Under President Obama, the US military has deployed greater and greater use of covert special-ops teams (like Navy Seals) to carry out missions and take out specific targets in the war on terror. Everyone knows about this now after Seal Team 6 and the killing of Bin Laden, and there’s no doubt these types of missions have taken out some big targets. But what if there is a darker side to those missions? Like if they operation accidentally takes out the wrong target? Or the fact that there is no capture, no trial to prove guilt, just a couple of people deciding who the targets are and who will die. There is no doubt that these missions have had success, but it’s naïve to think that there isn’t a downside to it, and this movie does a nice job of exploring that darkness.
23. Enemy This is a fascinating movie. It’s a movie that is deeply strange, difficult to understand, and creepy at times. Sold yet? It’s also really interesting, mysterious, and is filled with surreal symbolism. Jake Gyllenhall plays a character that is given a copy of a movie, and when he watches the movie he sees a character that has a bit role and looks exactly like him. When he sets out to find his double, things get strange. When the movie ended, I had to read a couple reviews to try to figure out what exactly I had just watched. There are some different theories out there about the movie, but reading it helped me wrapped my head around it a little more. It’s not an easy movie, but more interesting than many of the movies I have ahead of it on the list.
22. Pelotero Now we’ve reached the documentary section of this year’s list. This is a movie about the exploitation of poor workers in the Dominican Republic. In the film we see young men that are identified at a young age as having talent, and subsequently spend every day of their lives working towards the chance that they will be offered a job, possibly a multi-million dollar job, with a wealthy corporation in the United States. The chances of landing one of these jobs is miniscule, so the competition for the jobs is intense. For many of these young men, the chance at landing one of these jobs is the only way they can see to leave behind a life of extreme poverty and to provide for their entire family. Because the competition for the positions is so intense and there is so much at stake, corruption is widespread, with families lying about how old their sons are to improve their chances, to workers from the corporations trying to do what they can to sign the young men away from their competitors, even if it means spreading rumors and lying about the workers. Part of what makes this documentary even more fascinating is that the workers are baseball players, and the corporations are major league baseball teams. The movie follows two young men over several years as they try to make it to the big leagues. I especially enjoyed it because one of the young men, Miguel Sano, who is 16 at the start of the movie, is now 20 and on the verge of making it the big leagues as one of the best hitting prospects in baseball for the team I love, the Minnesota Twins.
21. Coherence This movie is a trip. It starts with a dinner party on an evening where some sort of planetary anomaly is going on outside. The first part of the movie is mostly dialogue and interactions between friends, but then some weird stuff starts to happen outside. Good luck if you can figure out exactly what is going on after that point – it’s very mysterious, and tension starts to build between the characters as more unusual things start to happen. It’s a small movie without any actors that you will recognize, but it’s really fun to watch and try to figure out the puzzle of what is happening. This is a director that I’m looking forward to seeing more from in the future.
20. The Imitation Game Every year there are a couple movies that I don’t have much interest in, but they gen it gets nominated for best picture so I feel obligated to watch it. Then when I actually do get around to watching the movie I realize it’s actually pretty good. This is a nice story, it’s interesting, and it’s well acted. It’s the story of Alan Turing, who was a fascinating man that helped crack Nazi encryption during WWII. Benedict Cumberbatch, as always, is fantastic. So this one was good, but it’s still going to be a while before I get around to The Theory of Everything.
19. Mad Max: Fury Road This movie is essentially a two hour long car chase through a bizarre post-apocalyptic wasteland. There’s really no backstory for any of the characters, or explanation of why all the men in the movie look like evil mimes with shaved heads and no shirts. The character development is minimal, as is the plot, but wow, what a chase. Max is played by Tom Hardy, but Charlize Theron steals the show as Furiosa, the one who starts the whole chase when she tries to escape along with several of Immortan Joe’s wives. Not too many movies have more outrageous action scenes than this one, exemplified by one of the chase vehicles having a demonic heavy metal guitarist strapped to the front and constantly playing while dodging grenades and bullets during the chase.
18. Whiplash I can’t decide whether I really liked this movie, or if it’s just too much. Miles Teller plays a talented drum student at a prestigious music school, where he is taught by an incredibly intense J.K. Simmons. Simmons deservedly won Best Supporting Actor for this role, and Teller is excellent too, as Simmons pushes and pushes him to his breaking point. It’s just that Simmons is sooooo over the top crazy and maniacal that I had a little trouble buying it at times. He reminded me of a meaner version of Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross.
17. Under the Skin This is probably one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. It is intentionally difficult. There’s very little dialogue, there is jarring music that plays throughout. There are a couple of scenes that are really gruesome – not bloody, but disturbing. But it’s also fascinating and totally unique. Scarlett Johansen plays some sort of alien creature that seduces lonely men and captures them. The second half of the movie is especially interesting as Johansen’s character encounters kindness and violence and tries to figure out what it means to be a human.
16. Nightcrawler In Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhall plays one of the creepiest characters in recent memory. At the start of the movie he plays an unemployed young man, trying to figure out what he can do to make a buck. He comes across an accident scene, and sees a group of photographers trying to capture the scene for the evening news. He’s intrigued, and quickly realizes he has a talent for it. He succeeds in part because he has no moral compass at all, and is willing to do things that no one else will to get a shot. Normally I don’t like this type of movie where the protagonist is so unlikeable, but this was fascinating (if disturbing at times) to watch.
15. Starred Up I’ve always thought prison movies are fascinating. The Shawshank Redemption is an all-time great, and a couple of years ago I loved a French prison movie called A Prophet. This movie isn’t quite that caliber, but it is powerful and jarring. Jerry O’Connel plays a teenager that has been “starred up”, moved to an adult prison, because he is so violent. Within hours of his arrival we see why. The prison he’s moved to is also home to his dad, played by Ben Mendelshon, who will not be winning any father of the year awards. It’s a violent movie, and doesn’t leave you feeling better about any of the characters, but it works because of the lead, Jerry O’Connel. He’s the same guy that plays the lead in Unbroken, but plays a totally different character here. In Starred Up he’s a ball of anger, ready to explode. O’Connel has a remarkable physicality, pacing and seething with rage. He is terrifying, but at the same time we care about his character. He wasn’t nominated for anything, but this was one of the top two or three acting performances of the year.
14. Calvary In the opening scene of Calvary, a man walks into confession and tells a priest (Brendan Gleeson) that he was molested by a priest as a child, and his going to kill Gleeson at the end of the week as retribution. The film follows the life of the priest as he interacts with his parishioners during the week in between. It takes places in a small town in Ireland, and most of the people in the town are unpleasant or downright awful people. Gleeson is incredible to watch as a wise, weathered soul that tries to bring grace and integrity to people that don’t really want it. This was one of my favorite characters of the year. I have a soft-spot for movies that portray Christianity in a non-cynical, non-syrupy way. The priest’s faith is hard-won, having entered the priesthood after his wife’s death, and his many flaws make him more endearing. He’s a gruff man, but shows grace and wisdom in a difficult situation, and Gleeson gives him powerful depth.
13. True Detective, Season 1 I don’t really watch any TV shows, but the pairing of Matthew McCaughahey and Woody Harrelson in a series that was only 8 espisodes long? Sign me up. I’m not a huge fan of the serial-killer genre, but this was done so well it was hard not to enjoy. These are two really, really good actors, and it felt like watching a movie broken into smaller parts. There is one scene in particular, a raid where McCaughnahey’s character is undercover, that is a single take and was maybe the most intense scene in any movie or show I watched all year. Season 2 starts this summer with a totally different cast and story but I’ll certainly check it out after how good this was.
12. American Sniper I watched Sniper in the theater on the same day I watched Fury on DVD. They are both war movies, and both have handsome movie star leads (Bradley Cooper here, Brad Pitt in Fury), but this is a better movie in every way. Sniper is the story of Chris Kyle, the deadliest sniper in American military history. It’s an intense movie at times, but it also does a decent job of showing the impact that military service has on soldier’s families. Fury was just a shoot ‘em up war movie, and Sniper is a lot more than that. At times the movie borders on hero-worship, portraying Kyle as pretty much the perfect American man, but overall it’s a very entertaining film.
11. Unbroken Unbroken is one of my favorite books of the last five years. It’s the truly incredible story of Olympic runner Louie Zamperini, whose plane crashes over the Pacific, but somehow manages to survive at sea, and as a prisoner of war. I always love wilderness survival stories, and this is one the most amazing ones I’ve ever read. It’s a remarkable testament to what humans are capable of, both good and bad. The movie version isn’t in the same league as the book, but it does enough to be worth seeing. The movie leaves out the book’s final act, which deals with Zamperini’s struggles after returning home, which I thought was one of the most powerful parts of the book, but I can also understand why they left it out. Zamperini is played by Jerry O’Connel, who is fantastic – he is going to be a star. Seeing him in this, and in Starred Up, where he plays a totally different character, give you a good idea of what he’s capable of as an actor.
10. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes It’s a bit surprising that a movie that’s a sequel to a remake is one of my top movies of the year, but this is the rare case where the sequel is actually a better movie. The movie mostly revolves around the conflict between a group of humans in San Francisco and a group of apes living just outside the city. As a typed that last sentenced I just realized that sounds like an awful movie, but it’s a really enjoyable, smart, action film. The ape characters are terrific – they are much more interesting than any of the human actors, most of whom are forgettable. Can we all just agree that Andy Serkis, who plays the lead chimp character Ceasar, and also played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, is the best CGI based actor ever? The way he uses his facial expressions and voice to give humanity to non-human characters is pretty remarkable.
9. The Edge of Tomorrow I was pretty skeptical about this one after seeing the previews. It looked too similar to Tom Cruise’s Oblivion from a year before, which wasn’t very good. This was such a pleasant surprise. It’s not really an original idea – it’s a sci-fi version of Groundhog Day. But it’s done so well that it is a ton of fun to watch, and you find yourself getting sucked in almost immediately. A terrific summer movie.
8. Wild This is a faithful adaptation of a book I really enjoyed. If you haven’t read the book (which you should), it’s the story of a woman who sets out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail after her mother dies, her marriage ends, and her life starts to fall apart. The lead is Reece Witherspoon, who I didn’t think much of earlier in her career, but now seems to be playing some grittier and more interesting characters.
7. Blue Ruin This was the best indie movie I saw all year. The premise is fairly simple – a homeless man finds out that the man that killed his parents has just been released from prison, and he sets out for revenge. Except it turns out the murder story is a little more complicated than it originally seems. I don’t know that I’ve ever watched a movie with more tension from start to finish. And seeing this odd, seemingly gentle man transform into someone hell-bent on revenge is fascinating if painful to watch. It’s certainly not a fun movie, but it is great, and has some beautiful, haunting scenes – a shot of the old car the main character drives (the blue ruin of the title) winding its way into the fog-filled mountains stood out as especially great.
6. A Most Wanted Man When Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy came out a couple years ago I had high hopes. A real spy movie – not the James Bond type (not that I don’t enjoy those too) that was smart, tense, and had great actors. The only problem was that the actual movie was really boring. Fortunately, A Most Wanted Man is pretty much everything I hoped that movie would be. The plot moves a little faster, but the biggest difference is that this movie has Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman is on screen in almost every scene, and he is at his best. Watching this movie will remind you how great an actor he was. He was a great character actor, but good enough to carry a movie too. If you’re looking for a spy movie with lots of killing and explosions watch Kingsman: The Secret Service. But if you want an intelligent, tense spy movie that has some basis in reality, you can’t get much better than this.
5. Selma I didn’t realize this until I read a review of Selma, but until now there haven’t really been any movies about Martin Luther King, have there? How is that possible? Fortunately, this movie gets it right. I was thinking about this movie, which I really enjoyed, and comparing it to 42, the Jackie Robinson biopic that came out last year that was only ok, and trying to figure out why it was better. The acting is great – David Oyelowo is terrific as King, but the acting in 42 was good too. I think one difference is that the movie doesn’t make a saint out of King. In 42, Robinson seems so perfect he doesn’t seem like a real person. In Selma, King comes off as a great man, but the movie shows his humanity too. The other thing they got right is that Selma focuses on one year, 1965, and the march from Selma to Montgomery, rather than trying to tell King’s whole life story in two hours. Yes, there is plenty about King that was left out, but hopefully someone else will make those movies too. This is a thoughtful, thought-provoking movie.
4. Guardians of the Galaxy This was easily the most fun I had watching a movie this year. After seeing the previews I thought this looked terrible, but man was I wrong. There’s nothing particularly original about the plot, but the characters and dialogue are fantastic. The idea of a talking raccoon and a walking tree doesn’t look good on paper, but on the big screen they are great. It has a fun soundtrack, Chris Pratt is a surprisingly good and funny lead, and Groot might be my favorite movie character of the year.
3. Birdman Shortly before I started doing this movie list, the movie 21 Grams was my favorite movie of 2003. It was directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu who made Babel a couple years later (#4 on my 2006/2007 list) and then Biutiful (2nd to last on my list in 2012). So I can’t say I’ve loved everything he’s done, but there is something enjoyable about seeing a director you’ve been following before they were big, make a movie that fully reaches their potential. There is good reason that Birdman won Best Picture and Inarritu won Best Director. This is an incredibly creative story – an aging Hollywood action star decides to stage an adaptation of a Raymond Carver story on Broadway, mostly to try to regain some semblance of respect. The aging superhero action star is played, in undoubtedly the best casting choice of the year, by Michael Keaton. The rest of the cast is great too. The story is good, and it’s fascinating to watch as we move between reality and what is going on in Keaton’s head. On top of that the way the movie is filmed is incredible – it is basically one long scene. There were a couple other movies I enjoyed more this year, but I was glad to see Birdman recognized as a great movie.
2. Interstellar I didn’t get to see this in the theater, which I regret, but there isn’t much else that was disappointing about Interstellar. I had huge hopes for this movie, mainly because Christopher Nolan is my favorite director, and Matthew McCaughnahey is as good an actor as there is right now. My anticipation was slightly tempered when I heard quite a few people say they didn’t like it. In the end I loved the movie. Nolan is a great storyteller that uses special effects to enhance, rather than distract from his stories. He is incredibly creative, and his stories are thoughtful, complex, and original. Interstellar is my favorite kind of science fiction – big ideas, thoughtful, creative, but still fun with good characters anchoring the story. I’m not sure if this cracks my all-time sci-fi top 10, but it’s certainly close.
1. Boyhood For me Boyhood wasn’t just the best movie of the year, it was an all-time great. When I heard about the premise I was intrigued. You’ve probably heard the idea by now – Richard Linklater filmed the movie using the same actors over 12 years. And the process of watching these characters age on-screen is fascinating. But the movie is so much more than that. It’s filled with so much humanity. There were so many times when it could’ve veered into melodrama, but never did. It’s beautiful watching this family (including the parents) grow up and do the best they can. I wouldn’t say that I could identify with any of the characters, but I cared deeply about all of them by the end of the film. I find it absurd that Linklater didn’t win Best Director or Best Picture for this movie – he did something that had never been done before, and made a truly beautiful movie. I thought Birdman was great, but Boyhood was a classic.
I also re-watched a few older movies this year (but less than usual), so a few lines about each of them.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail This was my favorite movie when I was in junior high – I watched it over and over with my friends, repeating lines and laughing out loud every time. So naturally I watched it with my son that’s in junior high last summer. I found that I could still recite most of the lines from the movie, and while maybe I didn’t find it quite as funny at 41 as I did at 14, it will always be an all-time favorite for me for sentimental reasons.
Napoleon Dynamite Napoleon Dynamite is a more recent movie, but I still consider it a classic comedy and a classic ‘high school’ movie. The movie has a silliness and earnest charm that make it hard not to love. Not to mention some of the most memorable teen movie characters (Napoleon, Pedro, Kip, Uncle Rico), and one of the great dance scenes in movie history. I also watched this with my 14 year-old and he now considers it one of his favorite movies.
The Goonies If you are a person around my age, it is almost a guarantee that you saw the Goonies, and that you have fond memories of it. This movie has lived on for our generation, and this year they are celebrating the 30 year anniversary of The Goonies in Astoria where it was filmed. It’s not necessarily a great work of art, but it’s impossible to watch this movie and not be entertained.
The Lego Movie I have now seen this movie four times in the two years since it came out. Last year it was in my top 10 when I saw it for the first time. Upon further review, I stand by my comment that this is one of my favorite kids movies ever made.
The Game I watched this one again because my friend Scott told me he had re-watched it and he thought it was so good it might be on his all-time favorites list (if he’s anything like me, there are probably 200 ‘favorite’ movies on that list). I enjoyed it a lot – the short version of the plot is that Michael Douglas plays a rich guy that thinks he has it all, until his brother, Sean Penn, buys him an experiential gift – ‘The Game’ that he says will change his life. From that point on Douglas’ life is plunged into chaos and we don’t know what is real and what isn’t. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a rental. But an all-time classic? Scott, I don’t know if that’s quite as strong an overstatement as saying that the remake of King Kong was one of the best movies of the year a couple years ago, but I don’t think I’d call this one a classic, just a fun movie.
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